A Study in Trauma
by tiny-white-lies
Summary: It doesn't feel like one of those near-death things. What do you call it when your lungs deflate and can't inflate again? Expiration?


(I know it's been said, BUT) I've been struggling whether to continue or not. I'm aware my writing style isn't the most interesting in the world and would like to know if I should bother. Let me know in a comment, please! Just anything short and sweet; it doesn't have to be a novel!

* * *

Now this.

This was ironic.

I'm wearing a white shirt and I can't hear a single thing. Not my heartbeat. No other voices. No rustle of leaves.

I look down at myself and the corner of my mouth twists into a sick little grimace.

I live in a world where human canines run around nipping at each other and playing sassy pack war games. I live in a world where, at one point, I had a handful of _mountain_ ash that I wished really hard would replenish itself. I'd shut my eyes, begged a non-specific deity for more, and more was what I got.

I've dug up half of a body before. I got the wrong person arrested. I lost a girl I thought I loved to a werewolf.

I've stood in front of a lizard-canine-human before, in my world.

It had paralytic saliva.

I've held up a man that coupled as a wild animal afloat in my high school's pool after hours. I've saved lives and I've been a witness of lost lives. I've gotten my father fired before, in my world, because of things that only exist in movies.

Sometimes I lie awake in bed and think about this little world of mine. On those nights, I'm terrified and I'm completely alone. I'm one of those Chinese figurines in a fancy-plates shop and I'm always holding up the hem of my skirt to run away from the charging bull in there. I think about how my life expectancy dropped from 75 years to 20. I wonder what's going to be the final nail in my coffin and it's hardly an anxiety trigger anymore.

I think about ten pointy keratin blades tearing through my flesh daily. I laugh about it now because the thought of dying via claws opening up my thoracic cavity is still terrifying. I'm nauseous on nights like these when I acknowledge the world I live in. I get up, turn a lamp on, and do some homework.

Nothing feels like it should and, on these nights, I'm standing at a slight angle. One of my feet isn't even planted in reality with the rest of me. I can't see the horizon – I'm a confused pilot.

That's what it is now, at this exact moment. I'm confused.

I don't really see anything, looking down at myself. I don't really know what I'm looking at.

So I raise my head and turn to the boy on my right. I need his help, but his face is a blank sheet of paper. I can't make out eyes, cheek bones, a nose, lips. My mouth is closed tightly, my teeth clenched together a little too firmly.

I can't unclench them because I'm not breathing.

I had this therapist for a while after Mrs. Stilinski died. That's how everyone refers to her because she seemed to have taught just about everyone at Beacon Hills. This therapist is the very best in family counseling and grief management. My guidance counsellors raved about her at the time and my father almost flung his wallet into the air in his haste to ship me off to therapy.

She would always tell me steps in dealing with confusion. This kind of confusion is of the depersonalization variety. It's the methamphetamine of the illegal substances world.

Depersonalization.

I'm supposed to stop and take a breath first if I suddenly feel like I'm dreaming.

I'm supposed to find a tap. I'm supposed to run some water over my hands and focus on the sensation. It's real. I'm real. Everything is real.

I should write my name down. My whole name. I have to remember who I am, first of all. That's what she told me.

But I'm having trouble breathing, so I continue down the list.

I should close my eyes now. That's what she always called her "fail safe".

Close your eyes and repeat affirmations to yourself, she said.

My name is Stiles Stilinski and I took two tablets of Acetaminophen today at 3:34 pm. I have a problem with curiosity and I refer to it as "professional". I am surrounded by a semi-circle of werewolves but I can still manage 90's in every class.

I can't remember my affirmations.

Look for a colour, she said.

My eyes snap open and I try to inhale. The motion feels impeded but I think it's just because I'm panicking.

I can't see a single colour in front of me. Objects are so blurry that it's like my 20-20 vision melted in seconds. All of a sudden I'm 80 years old and I've dropped my glasses. On top of that, the blurry shapes are in black and white.

I'm at the end of my list and I still can't breathe.

When I struggle a little harder to expand my lungs, I feel a tremendous ache from below my ribs. It stops my effort to drink oxygen in its tracks. I gasp and feel a sort of hot liquid in the back of my throat.

There's something much more wrong than a spell of depersonalization. Before, there was never a cause for an episode. It's brought on by an instance of tremendous stress, every online source will tell you. My stress would be an untimely flashback of my mother every single time.

When I was younger, that is.

That's _always_ what it is, and I'm always near a sort of sink. I would run the water over my hands and I would snap back to it. I would close my eyes, say my name, and focus on a colour. A green blade of grass or a red brick.

There was always something to ground me, but right now I have nothing. The boy with the blank face is all I have, and I reach out for him. I think I might be touching his arm when I feel the muscles tense and _twist_, and I'm sent into another tailspin of full body agony. I've never felt pain like this before.

I gag as he twists, still clutching his forearm. As I do, the hot liquid at the back of my throat spills out of my mouth and I can tell that it's almost black.

There are no teeth lodged in my throat and I can't feel that ominous scratch of fur against my clutching hand. There is a lack of tapetum lucidum in his blank face. I know I'd be able to see it if there was because I've been up close to too many _humans_ with it. Plus, except for the minimal amount of light supplied by a skinny sliver of moon and dull purple sky, it's dark.

It takes another mouthful of metallic, opaque liquid before I realize someone is trying to kill me.

And that's what I find ironic at this particular moment – that it's some_one_.

Not some_thing_.

Everything slows.

Down.

Furthermore, this some_one_ is the boy to my right. The faceless boy I thought could help me. I move my hand down to his while everything is still frozen and realize he's plunged something with a thick handle into the upper right side of my abdomen. He lets go of it so suddenly that I stumble into him a little. The wallet that was once in my hand, cool familiar leather, is relieved. I think he must have taken it right from my bloodied fingers.

I'm clutching his shirt, mostly because I want to ask him what he's done. I'm having trouble inhaling and my mouth is too busy filling with blood. I'm still confused. I feel like I know him; I feel surprised.

I was going to survive until I'm 20, I want to tell him.

That's when a werewolf would finally catch up to me that isn't on my side. That's when no one would be there to save me.

But he's ripping me off. He's doing it two years too soon.

He peels himself away from me, smooth and steady, and I'm standing straight up. I look down at myself again and my white shirt isn't white.

I cough, choke; the blood speckles my forearms, but I can't see any wound.

I'm confused but the twisting pain is gone and I feel okay otherwise. I'm not panicking anymore and I don't even think I'm in danger. While wondering why no one is approaching me about the incident with the boy, I feel around for the handle again. I can find it at a weird angle, an upward angle on my side, as long as I lift my shoulder a little bit. I can wrap my fingers around it like this. The handle is so thick and textured that it feels good and steady in my hand. If I can just pull it out, I'll be able to breathe. I think that boy may have nicked my lung. That's where all the blood's coming from, I think to myself.

I'm having trouble distinguishing edges and colours but as I'm deliberating, I can see someone tall and lean running towards me. I can tell he's lean from the coordination he's running with. He has black hair and dark clothes on but that's all I can tell in my depersonalized state. I'm seeing it very slowly but the way he does it looks stressed and it makes me uncomfortable. I can't get started pulling before he's right there, gripping my wrist so tightly that he might break it.

I want to tell him that I think I got stabbed and I can't breathe with it in there. He's stopping me from pulling it out; he's uncurling my fingers from the handle. Until he's holding me upright, I don't notice that my legs are about to fold under me.

"_Stiles._"

My name is muttered in my ear. And that's right. That _is_ my name. Instead of answering, more blood comes out of my mouth. I think he might be trying to kill me too.

"_Don't take it out,_" it whispers evenly in my ear again. It's low and trying not to be frantic. I use that exact tone all the time because I'm always frantic now.

"_Stiles. Open your eyes,_" it murmurs. "_Keep your eyes open_." His hands seem to be all over me at once and I think one of them is pressing my ribs around the blade. It hurts; I grab onto his forearm too, smearing blood everywhere.

I breathe a little bit now. It's noisy and strained.

"-_eighteen years old, abdominal stab wound, punctured lung_…" It's the same voice but it sounds different and far away from my ear.

I want its comforting familiarity back and murmuring to me, so I clutch his shirt.

Derek, I clutch Derek's shirt. That's whose voice it is. I do this mostly to get his attention but I'm also starting to feel anxious.

When I try to say his name, annoyed at his distance, I can only cough and splutter. Every last ounce of oxygen is out of my lungs now and I'm having trouble filling them again. This is when the panic begins. This is when I realize I've been panicking the whole time.

I can't hold myself up anymore but I'm not falling down either. Now that I'm aware I can't breathe, I notice the sharp pain in my abdomen that gets worse when I move. It starts to burn and throb and sting and ache all at once and worse and worse. Reaching its climax, I'm digging my nails into Derek's forearm. The skin is sticky and hot with my blood.

Leaning my head back, I'm surprised by the hard contact it makes with what seems to be concrete. He's holding me against a wall now and I can feel his hand applying pressure around the wound. The throbbing is beginning to slow but I think I'm starting to shake and the agony reaches new levels.

"_I can't help you heal; there are people everywhere,_" his voice murmurs close to my ear again. "_But you have to keep your eyes open, Stiles._"

He's panicking. If I could speak, I'd tell him that it was okay – that I wouldn't really mind dying like this. It's kind of funny, I would tell him. I'm around three inch claws all day but it's a mugger that's finally going to kill me. I hope he enjoys the three dollars and Starbucks giftcard. I hope it was worth it.

"_I can stop it from hurting_," he says quietly. I'm starting to hear a small sea of distressed voices around us. "_But you can't pass out, okay? Don't fall asleep._"

I don't really know what's he's talking about but it's not like I can ask. It's not until the aching and stinging and raw feeling is gone that I realize he's responsible somehow.

But the lack of pain makes me tired, just like he said. The pressure of his hand around the wound feels _good_.

Really_, really_good_._

I don't know why, but I feel like I should apologize when my eyelids droop. I never actually _did_ promise him that I would stay awake.

Just for a second.

"_Stiles_."

I feel boneless and weightless and every good thing I've never felt.

"_Stiles, listen to me._"

What's really the difference 2 years would make? All I can think when I begin to drift off is that he should've let me pull it out in the first place. But then he puts his hands on either side of my face and my eyes open in shock. Things are slowing down around me again and nothing is visually articulated in the background. Like a watercolour painting.

Finally I'm aware of the warm blood oozing from my side, which begins again when Derek lets go. I think someone in the crowd must've been instructed to keep applying pressure because I can feel hands that don't belong to Derek.

His eyes are wide and despite the dusk around us, I can see him perfectly. His eyes are bright green right now, tiny slivers around a blown pupil. They're looking at me with such determination that I have trouble keeping contact. His skin is smooth and pale except for the bit of blood smeared on his cheek. It looks like he smudged it there with his wrist by accident. I can see his teeth too, which look straight and white and perfect; no adjective even comparable to the usual "frightening". His teeth draw my eyes to his lips which are moving and I can hear the words, but nothing makes sense among the noise.

I never heard any sirens. All I see now is a great commotion in the crowd around us and it's making the constriction of my lungs even worse. I've never been good at handling anything hectic and a meltdown is full speed ahead. The foreign pair of hands withdraw as the crowd ripples and parts near me, and Derek starts to move aside too.

I catch him by the shirt or maybe his wrist. I'm terrified and I've never felt so betrayed when he pulls away.

I rasp, exhale, can't breathe back in. And just like that the once muffled pain comes back with vengeance.

I can't hold myself up but this time I don't fall because there are at least four pairs of strange hands all around me. One pulls something over my face, another does something at my side so entirely painful that I'm suddenly nauseous, another couple lift me and I'm lying on my back.

With the rush of oxygen in my nose and mouth, it's not as difficult to fill and empty my lungs. Some panic lifts and the depersonalization flickers like TV static; I can hear some voices in the distance. One is the pair of hands that made me nauseous, I think.

"_How are you related to the victim?_" He shouts over the crowd.

"_A friend_," Derek shouts back, and I think that's kind of nice.

But I know why he said it. _Alpha of his best friend_ would be weird. It's still nice.

"_Come with me_," The guy yells.

After a magnificently painful rocking of the gurney I'm lying on and a slam of some doors, the buzzing of voices is muffled and replaced by a new set of sounds. They're clinical, electronic, vinyl. They remind me that I'm dying.

I've been trying so hard to stay awake.

"_There's blood on the handle; did he try to take it out?_"

I'm surprised by the question, mostly because I'm having trouble opening my eyes and breathing let alone speaking. I had been gripping the cool metal of the gurney and as my anxiety returns, my grip relaxes. What's a difference of 2 years going to make?

"_Yes_." The voice that answers is forcibly civil.

"_Y'know, one of the girls out there was screaming that you did it._"

"_I didn't stab him; I stopped him from pulling the knife out._"

"_Who kept him standing up?_"

Derek sighs in frustration. His voice is so crystal clear, it could've been right next to my ear.

"_I did._"

"_How'd you know how to do that, son? 'Cause y'know lying down or pulling that knife out woulda killed him. If he passed out, too,_" the medic says conversationally. He doesn't sound suspicious anymore.

"_Accident-prone family_," Derek lies, curtly.

What he meant to say was something like, _I keep almost dying._ Or, _everyone around me keeps dying._ Or, _I've killed people._Or maybe, _I have a working knowledge of medicine and anatomy._

"_He's a lucky guy to be with you then, eh?_"

Something about a five-inch blade being plunged into my abdomen makes me incredibly sensitive. It must be an IV needle that punctures the junction of my forearm and bicep but it feels like a paring knife. I'm drowsy and confused and trying to breathe when my stomach leaps with my pulse and some nausea returns.

My hand is still clutching the metal gurney handle and somewhere between my waves of pain, another hand wraps around the handle nearby. His fingers touch my hand and I'm confused by the gesture until the crook of my arms numbs and the ache in my side disappears again. Until I'm pain-free, I don't realize how much of a feverish mess I am.

With the pain gone and the familiar touch, my heart slows and I feel that drowsiness again. My hand slips off the handle and I can feel Derek's follow it.


End file.
